Radical Amazement
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--Awakin
1 minute read
May 3, 2015

 

This week's Awakin reading is by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel titled 'Radical Amazement': The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin. Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to his spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. [...] As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind ... [Read more]

 

Posted by Awakin on May 3, 2015